Christiana Figueres, executive secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called for all nations to compromise on the future of the Kyoto Protocol at a Friday press conference in Cancun, a resort city on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

Her call came just hours after the nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas said publicly that they would not negotiate unless rich nations publicly committed to a second Kyoto Protocol commitment period. Cancun is hosting the 16th edition of the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP16) until Dec. 10.

"All nations need to go beyond national positions and seek areas where there could be agreements," Figueres said. "No one will be completely happy with any new agreement but that is the meaning of compromise."

Figueres said that Japan, Canada and Russia had long had the position that they cannot commit the terms of protocol for a second period, when it runs out in 2012. It commits 37 industrialized nations who have signed it to keeping greenhouse gas emission to no more than 5 percent above 1990 levels. It also creates mechanisms for rich nations, so called Annex I nations, to pay for greenhouse gas mitigation and prevention in poorer nations, the so-called Annex II. The Alba nations are Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador Nicaragua, Cuba, Antigua, St. Vincent and Dominica.

"A large number of nations need the rigor and certainty that the Kyoto Protocol provides," Figueres told media. "Governments are aware that the longer a decision takes on the Kyoto Protocol, the more the issue of a gap becomes more challenging."

The 1993 UNFCCC signatories have made progress on reforestation agreement United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, known as REDD.

"That work has been advanced for quite a while," she said. "It now needs to wait for participants to reach some level of compromise on other issues."

There are also hopes for agreement on a fund, known as the Green Fund, to support the fight against climate change first proposed by Mexico's President Felipe Calderon in 2009 as a 10- billion-dollar commitment largely from development nations.

There is more work to be done," she said. "There is agreement that the fund has to exist. The discussion is on sequencing."

Figueres said the parties are deciding if they will establish the fund and then do diligent design work or if they will kick start the design of the fund, and then establish it in South Africa. South African city Durban will host the 17th edition of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) in 2011.

(Xinhua News Agency December 4, 2010)